Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!

Originally published in Seoul Magazine, November 2007

Ddeok Ddeok Revolution!

By Tracey Stark

In an age of fluffy white bread, Krispy Kreme Donuts and chocolate chip cookies, Koreans found themselves looking inward in search of something flavorful, wholesome and, well, Korean for dessert. The search led straight to one of their most traditional and versatile foods: ddeok, or rice cakes.

The well-being trend, which started around 2002, brought attention back to many traditional Korean foods, such as kimchi, ddeok and dishes made with doenjang (fermented soybeans). Along with the well-being craze came entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the trend, preserve a part of Korean culture and compete with Western-style bakeries and coffee shops.

Although among Westerners the term “rice cakes” often brings to mind the crunchy, flavorless puffed-rice crackers sold in health food stores (known in Korea as bbeong tuigi), the Korean translation of the chewy, steamed or pounded rice desert is a more accurate use of the term.

Ddeok has traditionally been a food served only on special occasions. Over the years, though, the number of occasions has grown to the point that if you had a particularly large and prosperous family, hardly a week would go by when you did not eat ddeok.

Three weeks after a baby is born, family and friends celebrate with baej seol gi, a very pure-white colored ddeok. After 100 days, they break out the chal su-su gyeong dan (ddeok made with millet and red beans), o-sek song pyeon (five-colored ddeok) and again the baek seol gi.

During the Chosun Dynasty, when a student advanced in school, the family would send in ddeok for the teacher and students.
Weddings, birthdays, funerals and the anniversary of a parent or grandparent’s death all command a special kind of ddeok. There is a special ddeok for when a person turns 61 years old, or hwe gap. This is to celebrate the return of the zodiac sign of their birth year.

But, as the sphere of Western influence spread in Korea, bakeries have usurped the ddeok bang at gan, the neighborhood ddeok maker. Birthday cakes have replaced rice cakes as the centerpiece of the celebration. While ddeok is still served, it often remains on the periphery.

That modern tradition may be changing, however, as new methods of making ddeok meld with the taste buds of today’s Koreans resulting in more flavorful and varied types of ddeok than would typically be found at family gatherings.

Taking it to the masses

On the ground floor of the Institute of Traditional Korean food in Jongno-gu is the Jilsiru Rice Cake Café, which opened in 2002. The café serves 40 types of sweet and savory ddeok, ddeok sandwiches (in which the “bread” is made from rice served with an egg salad filling), tea and more.

In front of the café are parked several tourist buses. Being located between the Jongno and Insadong neighborhoods has attracted many people to the food institute, the ddeok museum, and of course, Jilsiru Rice Cake Café.

“The café was opened to let more people know about ddeok,” said Kim So-jung, manager of the Jilsiru in Jongno. “The well-being trend increased the popularity of ddeok and by 2004 we were much busier.” Ddeok is considered a low-calorie, low-sugar dessert.

Now, as the well-being craze wanes, Kim believes the introduction of more ddeok cafes is fueling the continued interest in the traditional Korean dessert.

Kim said the Insadong location was opened to introduce rice cakes to foreigners who might be more likely to go into a Starbucks.

Carolyn Papworth, a former food and travel writer for Lonely Planet Books and The Age newspaper in Melbourne and a current book editor in Seoul, has lived in Korea for five years and loved ddeok from the first time she tried it. “I’m inclined toward the texture of ddeok. I used to eat it all the time when I first moved here.”

“But the idea of a ddeok café seems a bit too contrived,” Papworth says. “If you want to add ddeok to your existing menu at your café, fine. But a ddeok-themed café? It seems gimmicky.” She does admit, however, that a place like Jilsiru is a great way to introduce tourists to ddeok and an aspect of Korean culture.

Although head to head competition between coffee shops and rice cake cafes tends to lean more toward The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf than to Jilsiru, Kim hopes time and a sense of cultural loyalty will change that.

Sung Jin-woo, 31, an English teacher in Seoul, prefers ddeok to bread. In fact, he says, he eats it for breakfast every day. But he is not a coffee or tea drinker and rarely frequents coffee shops. Until one was pointed out to him, he had never taken notice of a ddeok café. He still has yet to eat ddeok in one.

When his freezer is empty of the rice cakes his mother sent back with him from his last trip to Busan for Chuseok, Sung said he will probably buy a whole cheesecake and not look for more ddeok. “But,” he adds, “if there is ddeok and cheesecake available at the same time, I will buy both.”

Still, Sung believes the cafes and the evolution of ddeok is a good idea. “Making ddeok is important,” Sung says earnestly. “It’s our food.”

Although she eats it less frequently, she still enjoys it on occasions such as Chuseok and the Lunar New Year. “Ddeok is about celebration,” she said.

The changing face of ddeok

In an effort to turn new generations away from cookies and back to rice cakes, Jilsiru has taken the “less is more” approach.
“Traditionally, you had to buy ddeok in large quantities and bigger chunks,” Kim said. By making it bite-sized, Kim says, ddeok becomes a more elegant dish.

Size aside, Jilsiru also focuses on making ddeok pleasing to the eye and palate by combining common and uncommon flavors with modern food styling. One rice cake resembles a California sushi roll but is actually a ddeok stuffed with kimchi. Other varieties resemble cheesecakes or bon-bons. This, she believes, is what will attract the younger generation.

One of the main problems with ddeok is its relatively short shelf life. It typically keeps its optimum flavor for only one or two days. After that, it becomes stale and spoils rather quickly. Ddeok can be frozen and eaten for months at a time, as Sung has proven, but the flavor begins to suffer. The director of the food institute Sook Ja-yoon has been working for years to address these issues through developing a new style of packaging. What she has come up with is a vacuum-packed ddeok that can be heated in the microwave when one is ready to eat it.

One of Jilsiru’s most popular items is the ddeok sandwich. In the past 20 years, it was common for children to have pizza or hamburgers for school celebrations, but they have found in recent years the sandwich has been gaining in popularity.

Jilsiru also offers “lunch boxes” with a small salad, a ddeok sandwich and several varieties of sweet rice cakes for those on the go.

Though some of the flavors available from Jilsiru, like pumpkin or berry, might seem modern, there were around 100 ingredients used to flavor ddeok over the centuries. Many of these recipes were lost and many were just not available to the average Korean because fancy, flavored ddeok was most often reserved for the wealthy.

Other ingredients, such as cocoa, coffee, cheese, or green tea fit into the “fusion” category of modern ddeok.

Jo Ji-eun, 26, a translator at the National Palace Museum of Korea, thinks the new flavors are just the normal evolution of food that happens to all cultures, but she fears cafes will change the way people think about ddeok.

“Ddeok is about sharing,” Jo said “It never used to be possible to eat ddeok alone.”

She added that she would hate to see ddeok lose it cultural relevance.

Kim, on the other hand, looks forward to the day when ddeok becomes “Korea’s donuts.” As more rice cake cafes open and more specialty shops (ddeok jibs) and department stores offer a wider variety of rice cakes in more manageable portions, she may get her wish.


The Institute of Traditional Korean Food, the Ddeok and Kitchen Utensils Museums and Jilsiru Rice Cake Café are located at 164-2 Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu, two blocks north of the Jongno 3-ga Station (line 3) exit 7 and about four blocks southeast of the Anguk Station (line 3) exit 4. The Jilsiru Rice Cake Café in Insadong is one block south of Anguk Station exit 6.